We're apparently past the point of Borges warranting his own thread, so I'll put this here. It belongs here also because it mirrors Mazz' outlook.
An excerpt from his Herald column this morning:
One defensive coach from an upcoming Patriots opponent couldn't fathom Belichick's decision.
"I don't understand the thinking," he told the Herald yesterday. "Every defensive game plan against the Patriots starts with (the question), 'How are you going to handle Randy Moss?' You got to deal with Moss before you think about anything else.
"Long term getting rid of him may make sense, but unless they've got a Plan B, this just made it a lot more difficult for them to score points and they're going to need to score points to win this year."
The decision to dump Moss' contract and mercurial personality is a move akin to last year's dispatch of Seymour to the Oakland Raiders for a 2011 first-round pick. Maybe down the road that will bring a high yield, but what the Seymour trade led to was Belichick losing his locker room last year once the players realized he'd traded their season away for the long-term future of a team many of them might not be on. That's when the grousing and doubting began. Now he's done the same with the exiling of Moss, which Belichick tried to spin yesterday as a Christian act of charity.
The first and second paragraphs could be entitled "talent uber alles" and are reminiscent of the old Manny apologist posts (some of this is beginning to creep into the Moss trade thread too).
The anonymous defensive coach doesn't understand, really? OK, here goes: (i) Even on game day, the choice is not between the old Randy and no Randy; it's between a disgruntled Randy ("we're spreading the ball around") and no Randy; (ii) this guy, presumably not responsible for such matters, ignores the broader picture: the potentially toxic effect of a disgruntled Randy on the practice field and in the locker room, places that had to undergo environmental remediation after last season.
This is nothing like the Seymour deal, which can be criticized -- or praised -- fairly, but on completely different grounds. (Borges' effort to blame Seymour's departure for the sour locker room is cheeky and about as well grounded as TJ's on air criticism at the beginning of the 2003 season. Did Seymour alone phone that in -- or was Bledsoe on the line too?).
This is particularly annoying because if you want to criticize how this went down, there is ample room cited right there in the column -- the absence of a Plan B. You can argue strongly that with very good WRs available in the past offseason at modest prices (at ridiculously low prices for the Pats considering how they are stacked in the 2011 draft), the Pats should have gotten them one.
There is one reason and one reason only Borges doesn't go there: he is star obsessed, just like Mazz. Pay through the ass for every big name, and if you don't, you're cheap, stupid and don't want to win. There is a reason underlying this obsession -- stars make good sources.
